As drug formulary drug exclusion lists grow, patient access to medications and treatments is reduced. The article notes that drug formulary exclusion lists have grown by almost 160 percent from 2014 to the present. Those most affected by such changes include low-income and minority patients. Read...

On January 7, 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights released a guidance that further defines patients’ rights to access their medical records under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA’s) Privacy Rule. This guidance explains what...

At the 25th Annual HIPAA Summit, Jocelyn Samuels, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Director, encouraged covered entities uncertain about access rights to reach out to the OCR for clarification. Samuels indicated that the OCR expects this to be an “iterative” process, where the OCR provides...

Author Rachel Aviv recounts how adult guardians can sell the assets and dictate the lives of older Americans without their consent. It is a national problem that the author illustrates through actual life stories of unsuspecting seniors and their families. From brief court appearances, weak...

In January, the American Medical Association (AMA) published an opinion piece on access to medical records varies from state-to-state given the pricing for document reproduction. While patient portals help to bridge the gap, they are not a complete solution as they do not typically include the...

The author observes that exposure to HIPAA waivers are often the only introduction to privacy a patient receives regarding their electronic health record (EHR). That does not fully cover how their data will be collected, stored, used, and shared. Without a full understanding, patients might feel...

The Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight as part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Website provides details and facts sheets on the Patient's Bill of Rights—a set of rights which commenced on September 23, 2010.

The National Institute for Patient Rights (NIPR) conducted a survey of over 1,000 randomly-selected former hospital patients. This article summarizes the survey’s findings, and of particular note are violations regarding lack of access to review their health records.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that doctors and hospitals that receive federal funding face sanctions if they discriminate against people based on their gender or gender identity.